


out of nothing at all

by catchafallingstarfish (spaceboy_niko)



Series: who writes songfics in 2017 [3]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF, ScrewAttack RPF
Genre: Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Vignette, establishing a relationship, huh thats not a tag it should be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 19:33:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12991008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceboy_niko/pseuds/catchafallingstarfish
Summary: Sam likes to think he knows a lot of things. Not useless things, like the square root of eighty-seven or the capital city of Ecuador, but important things.(Inspired by 'Making Love Out Of Nothing At All' by Air Supply)





	1. i know just when to dream

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this fic to put off writing a fic that was written to put off writing three other fics
> 
> also i listened to air supply for three days straight

Sam likes to think he knows a lot of things.

Granted, he doesn’t know some (actually, quite a few) things, like the square root of eighty-seven or the capital city of Ecuador (because who has time for that shit?)– but he likes to think he knows a lot of important things.

Like how he knows just the way to talk Chad down when his emotions are running high – a gentle whisper that Sam thinks sounds kinda raspy, like he’s been smoking a pack a day since he was five, but has Chad clinging onto his every word and taking shuddery breaths that slowly even out to some kind of normalcy – and how he knows that if he’s feeling a little bit shitty, he can just sort of curl up into Chad while he rubs his shoulders and says nice things quietly to him, and fuck, if that gay shit don’t make him feel any better, nothing on this earth will.

Sam knows how to read Chad’s eyes when his answers don’t quite make sense, but he also knows how to lie effortlessly to everyone else when they ask the shifty questions. Chad always seems to look eternally grateful at this, their little unspoken conversations that they’ll (almost) never share with anyone else – except, of course, when Sam gets that weird kind of achey feeling in his guts that tells him that no, it’s only going to be worse for the both of you if you don’t tell anyone.

(and he’s listened to it every single time, except for when it told him to talk to Chad about being out together – he knows when he’s gonna get shot down, and so keeps that thought as a pleasant little domestic fantasy.)

* * *

And when it’s just the two of them, Sam knows he knows even more – he knows just where to touch Chad to melt him under his hands (or rile him up), and he knows when to pull him in close and just bathe in the hazy atmosphere of his own mind.

(and he also knows when to roll over and let Chad straddle him with that smug motherfucking– and that’s another thing he knows, that Chad James is, was and always will be a smug bastard.)

* * *

Yeah, Sam likes to think he knows things, but there are some things he tries to kid himself out of knowing.

Like how he’s pretty sure he knows that Chad is getting antsy about this thing they’re doing, despite having no one to disappoint aside from Sam (and maybe Bolen, maybe Craig, but they’re pretty hard to disappoint), and he definitely knows that they don’t have all that much time together, what with the chaos that is the rest of their lives.

Like fuck is he gonna tell Chad all that.

(he’s only going to try and tell him some of it)


	2. i don't know how you do it

In the meantime, Sam’s going to focus on the other things he does know – the ideas and things that keep him in his job, his own little metaphorical road to El Dorado. But that’s the boring shit he knows.

The more exciting shit he knows is the way that Chad’s trusted him in such a way that he knows, they both know that Chad’s heart is out in the open and Sam has full knowledge of all the ways that he could just break it with a couple of words.

(Sam’s in exactly the same situation, and he knows it, he just doesn’t like to know that he knows it)

So he keeps it wrapped up tight in emotional bubble-wrap that he can’t resist popping a bit of on occasion. After all, what’s the fun in un-poppable bubble-wrap?

* * *

But despite liking to think that he knows things, Sam knows one more thing: he doesn’t know some things.

Scratch that, he doesn’t know many things.

By far the most important thing he doesn’t know, the thing he hopes he never knows, is how to pick his shit up off the floor and out of the drawers at Chad’s, shove it all into a bag and walk out. He could never just do that – even if they didn’t have this weird fuck-under-the-radar thing happening, they’d still be friends. Sam’s not a hundred percent sure, but he’s pretty certain friends stick by each other and don’t pull the rug out from underneath each other, and especially aren’t backstabbing little fucks to each other. Chad’s a metaphorical trapeze artist, and Sam’s not going to let him fall, no matter how good he’d look sprawled out lazily in the safety net.

* * *

There’s another thing he doesn’t know that bugs him slightly less, but that doesn’t stop it from being a constant enigma in his life.

Sam and Chad are similar, understandably – spending that much time together means you pick up some quirks from each other – but they have their differences, some more significant than others.

Sam drinks Fireball like it’s soda, Chad can’t stand the stuff.

Sam sprawls over the couch and stays there, Chad is constantly moving around, from the middle to his corner to having his head in Sam’s lap and his feet over the back.

Sam is relaxed, almost lackadaisical when it comes to working in a relationship, wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, whereas Chad.

Chad commits with a kind of all-encompassing love that manifests in the many forms of buying Sam a coffee in the morning and offering to wash up when it wasn’t his night and kissing that one spot along Sam’s neck as his hands wander south.

And the thing that Sam doesn’t know is where all this love comes from. There is no fucking way that that much pure affection can be squished into one human being.

It’s impossible, and a little unfair. He tries telling Chad this, when he brings him a lovely golden-brown bagel from that new little place that’s opened up nearby because he thinks Sam needs to eat lunch that isn’t alcohol or Red Bull, but it gets lost in the little kiss that Chad presses to his hair and the “Don’t work yourself too hard, we’ll have a good weekend so you can relax” that just makes him fucking melt, and when did he become such a sappy motherfucker?

He blames Chad, but not really.


	3. a beacon burning endlessly bright

Light. Light does good things to Chad, Sam thinks. Sam knows.

Sam first realises he knows this on their first morning-after – Chad is asleep on his side of the bed, back facing the window they forgot to close and the bright sunlight beaming through it. His hair’s a total mess (that Sam takes full credit for) and he looks so goddamn placid that Sam just wants to kiss his forehead and pull the blanket up over him properly.

But then he blinks away slowly, and it takes a couple of seconds for him to register that Sam is a few inches closer than expected, and he sits up a little. And, holy fuck, the sunlight streams through his hair and makes a halo out of all the little flyaways, and if Sam wasn’t already convinced that Chad was an angel, he would’ve been converted right in that very moment. He’s officially the Pope of the new Church of the Holy Bed-Hair of Chad James, and Jesus can suck his dick.

(Sam most definitely knows he’d rather have Chad suck his dick than Jesus.)

For a heart-stopping moment, Sam thinks that Chad’s gonna bail and get out of bed, picking up his clothes from wherever the fuck they ended up and driving back home.

But he doesn’t. Chad, the lovely son of a bitch, smiles and asks, “What, you didn’t make me breakfast in bed?”

* * *

Sam realises he knows this again at night, when they’ve been out hitting the town and they’re more than a little drunk and he’s not afraid to get more than a little handsy.

(Sam also knows that Chad holds his liquor better than he does, and Sam’s no lightweight.)

Streetlights aren’t as flattering as he’d like on Chad, but Sam’s gonna take what he can get. Then again, he’s certainly not going to say no to the brilliant idea of taking their backup bottle of Jameson and drinking it on the fishing pier.

The fishing pier isn’t lit up like the city or the tourist attractions on the waterfront, and so the sky is almost impossibly clear. The moon is big, but not full (waxing or waning, that’s another thing Sam doesn’t know), and the stars do their thing of looking a billion times better when he’s buzzed.

And Chad must be turning him into a rom-com, because he takes a swig of whiskey and passes the bottle back to Chad and all the stars seem suspended and magnified in his eyes like he’s under a thousand tiny spotlights. His fringe has done the thing it does when he’s drunk and touches it too much or not enough, and it loses its will to stay in place, falling over one eye, and Sam is not having that. No sir, not tonight, not on a night when there are more stars in the sky than Sam could ever think of and the moonlight makes Chad’s pale skin look almost ethereal. So he does what any sensible person would do and fixes Chad’s hair for him.

Chad’s mouth tastes like whiskey. He’s warm and he’s welcoming and just so goddamn bright he seems to be sucking the dark from around them and throwing more light up with the moon and the stars, and Sam is just so perfectly settled into the rhythm of Chad that it’s almost unnatural.

But then they break apart (Sam knows that needing to breathe is a stupid thing– why can’t humans just absorb the air?) and it’s hard to see Chad’s face for the dark, but the moon is still leaving its pale light over them when they stagger through Chad’s front door as Sam gets a taste of the last mouthful of Jameson.

Chad practically fucking glows under him, flares brightest with a gasp that makes him clench and Sam groan and follow him downwards.

(because Sam doesn’t know shit without Chad, and he’s more than happy to follow his shiny ginger beacon into the humongously scary unknown.)


	4. every promise that has ever been made

They’re like the middle of a marathon, too far in to back out but with a definite ending nowhere in sight. Sam has no fucking idea how he manages to keep running – maybe it’s the thought of a grand finale, a ribbon-breaking finish where he walks into the office holding Chad’s hand and kisses him in front of their coworkers as they part ways for the day, or where they can go home together and afterwards, Chad can stay for as long as he wants.

(and Sam knows he wants that to be for-fucking-ever)

Chad’s not doing so good in their run, though – the distance is getting to him a bit, and he still focuses on just putting one foot in front of the other, but sometimes Sam thinks he’s tripping over his shoelaces, because he’s still hesitant – affectionate and fantastic as all hell behind closed doors, but he clams up as soon as Sam tries to hold his hand or whisper something into his hair.

Sam doesn’t want to push on ahead – he’s not a rug-pulling, backstabbing dirty son of a bitch, he’ll catch a bro who’s stumbling beside him – but their finish line has always been his end goal, and if he’s gonna stick with the sports metaphors, he wants them to be his final touchdown, the final goal that makes the stadium rise in a wave and roar with their names.

(Sam doesn’t know shit about sports, and he’s pretty sure Chad doesn’t either, which is oddly comforting.)

* * *

Chad’s a magician, with a specialty in the disappearing act, and Sam hates him a little bit for it.

They’ve been known to pull all-nighters doing god knows what – drinking, playing video games, fucking on the couch like horny teenagers, the usual – and time never seems real for them, the hours taking forever to pass and blurred a little by sheer exhaustion to the point where everything Chad says is funny and endearing.

And Sam’ll blink and then Chad’ll work his magic, and when he opens his eyes he’ll be on the couch with a blanket or in bed tucked up like he’s a little kid, with an empty apartment and a note written at the bottom of a fading receipt in Sharpie.

(and Sam knows he’ll be back, that Chad hasn’t just walked out on his sorry ass, but it still makes him feel a little like shit.)

Sometimes, it feels like Chad didn’t just disappear, but makes everything that happened disappear with him.

Some nights, Sam tries to make him stay. Chad yawns, and Sam hears his jaw pop, and kisses him somewhere around the temple to make it better, as if it’s all the promises he’s ever made Chad and then some. Chad’s hair is tickly on his face, but it smells nice – clean, with a hint of something sort of sweet, and totally the best smell – and he asks if he’ll stay the night.

Chad laughs and fucking squeaks when Sam pulls him into the couch space between his legs, wrapping his bony arms around his stomach and giving him a squishy hug.

“Nah, man, I can’t,” Chad wheezes out, and Sam sulkily buries his face in Chad’s back.

(he knows better than to ask why.)

“One for the road?” he tries hopefully, and settles for Chad crawling up him and swinging a leg easily over his hips, and everything’s okay for just a little bit longer.

* * *

“What the fuck, Sam?”

Sam knows that Chad has every reason for saying that.

“You know we can’t just do that!”

No, he doesn’t – rather, Sam knows just the opposite. They can, they should, they’ll take on the world together if they do, and he’s pretty sure that’s what Chad wants too.

Chad stammers, and now Sam knows. “Well– yeah, of course I do, but what are people gonna say? We could lose our jobs, our friends might ditch us, we–“

That’s bullshit, and Chad knows it. Sam knows he doesn’t have enough body parts to count off how many queer-at-least people they know at work, and most of those are their friends or friends of friends, so Chad really doesn’t have anything to worry about.

Sam’s beginning to suspect Chad’s just a pussy.

“Hey, you are what you eat.”

Also bullshit.

Anyways, he’s getting off track. The point is, they’ve been going behind everyone’s backs for so long now, and it’s starting to make Sam feel god damn awful. He doesn’t know how Chad feels, though, and he doesn’t want to push anything, but he knows that he’s been holding off on asking this question for a really long time.

“Wait– shit, man, really?”

Yup.

“Why didn’t you say anything before?”

Because Chad’s a pussy.

(and Sam is too, but Chad needs to know that like Chad needs a black eye.)

“So are you.”

(Chad really needs a black eye.)

“Ok, so we’re both pussies.” Chad mulls it over a bit. “Kinda sucks we were both pussy bitches that couldn’t get our shit together. We should've done this earlier for both our sakes. We’re so fucking useless without each other.”

Never gonna make it without you, man.

Chad smiles, and tentatively takes his hand. “So, now it’s all baby steps, right, Sam?”

They’re still way behind baby steps, they’re still fucking crawling.

Chad laughs. “I know, dude.” He hesitates a bit, and Sam can hear him breathe in deep. “Love you, you know that, right?”

And yeah, Sam does know it. It’s the most important thing he knows, the thing that makes him lean over and kiss Chad, and if it wasn’t, Chad’s mouth on his wouldn’t feel like the first time all over again.

(love you too, you lovely motherfucker.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've officially written 50% of the fic in this tag

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on tumblr (spaceboy-niko.tumblr.com)
> 
> my rt writing blog (catchafallingstarfish.tumblr.com)


End file.
